Personality in the Classroom

Personalities in the classroom

“Personalities in the classroom” by David Hodgson is extremely informative, detailed and well thought out whilst still easy to read and relate to.

If you question yourself after engaging with children and wonder why some do not take on board what you say and rub you up the wrong way here the author explains why the friction is possibly occurring, it’s the interaction of specific personality types.

The author’s wealth of knowledge is grounded in reality. He is a trainer of educators in Jungian personality type theory and its applications in education. There is a good balance of facts and figures with fun information making the book accessible and enjoyable. We learn that we tend to have strong tendencies to four personality traits and in order to be more rounded personalities there are another four that we can develop. He describes lots of activities that we can undertake to develop the weaker traits. The practical approaches he describes will encourage teachers to find new ways of meeting the needs of individual learners.

The use of metaphors is clever like cats, birds etc to describe personalities. When you have worked out personality type you are you will be labelled a particular animal. He relates many examples of famous people and their animal types as well as historical events from the past and present. You can work out what personality type John F Kennedy was just by reading his speech.

The most important message of this book appears to be that communication can be effective between two people if we can understand how each prefer to communicate and learn. For example if you have a ‘seahorse’ student then amongst their traits as children is “sensitive and emotional dreamers can be clingy toddlers…” . It is overflowing with useful interventions and information on communication styles and behaviours of teachers and learners.
There are endless examples of ways to improve and meet the needs of different personalities in the classroom.

Brilliant reference book for anyone interested in improving communications. If it all gets too much (257 pages) you are treated to a summarised tables of how to deal with different personalities and problems straight away in your life. The authors expertise on the topic is commendable and this is a highly recommended resource.